


Contamination as the Sincerest Form of Flattery

by imperfectkreis



Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Bisexuality, Hand Jobs, Love/Hate, Lyrium Addiction, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-15
Updated: 2015-03-15
Packaged: 2018-03-17 21:58:19
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,265
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3545228
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/imperfectkreis/pseuds/imperfectkreis
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cullen and Maxwell aren't even friends, shackled as they are to fates that should no longer be theirs.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Contamination as the Sincerest Form of Flattery

The first time Cullen sees the so-called Herald of Andraste, he could swear it is some sort of joke. Cassandra and Leliana have kept him tucked away, out of sight, since he was pulled from the explosion at the Conclave. Cullen has been busy with other matters, such as the demons raining from the sky. He can’t be bothered to dwell on a prisoner who may or may not be useful to closing the Breach. 

But there is that thing on his hand, the one that glows, that the strange elf, Solas, says might be able to close the tear in the sky. At this point, Cullen is short on men and even shorter on patience so he’s willing to give anything a shot. 

He can tell from the way Trevelyan holds his sword and shield that he has been properly trained, not just an idle noble who carries weapons for show. Cullen still thinks this is some sort of mistake, even if the man may look the part, tall, broad shouldered, clean shaven, it doesn’t add up quite right. Right now he can’t put his finger on it, and there’s not time to contemplate as they push towards the Breach with the scant troops they have. 

It is not until well into the battle that Cullen suddenly realizes why he has such a sense of unease. Trevelyan Purges. He is a Templar. 

\--

They meet again, of course they do, after Trevelyan wakes up. It takes some time for him to come out of his sleep, and Cullen presses forward with his duties. 

They declare the Inquisition proper, Cassandra, Leliana, Josephine, Trevelyan, and himself. It has been a long time coming. He and Cassandra discussed the possibility at some length, already knowing Leliana was eager to begin. the quicker the better.

Trevelyan comes to visit him beside the troops. The noble says very little and Cullen knows no suitable topics for discussion other than tactics. They simply stand next to one another while Cullen barks orders at those men and women who are in great need of remedial training they probably will not receive. 

“Do you not have anywhere else to be, Herald?” Cullen finally says.

Trevelyan shrugs his shoulders, brushes his dark hair away from his eyes. “As far as I know, I should be dead. So just being here is fine.’

Cullen does not ask him any additional questions. Only he notices his green eyes are rimmed red.

\--

Trevelyan stands before him, his hands shaking. It is more emotion than he has ever seen from the normally reserved man. Cullen is not entirely sure what he is supposed to do in the moment. 

“Commander, may we speak privately?” Trevelyan asks.

“Of course, Herald.”

They step away from the troops, behind the line of trees that shelters Haven. Privacy is never guaranteed in such cramped quarters as the sleepy little town the Inquisition has commandeered, but this should do well enough.

“I saw you, at Therinfal.”

Cullen narrows his eyes, “I do not know what you mean. I was here.”

“No, I had some sort of dream, a vision. And you were in it.” This is the most they have ever spoken to one another directly in the months they have served the Inquisition. And it’s not as if they’ve said anything. “I feel like I have been unfair to you, given the circumstances.”

“How, Herald?” Cullen truly does not know. They have continued to be respectful to one another. Trevelyan listens to his advice and heeds it as appropriate. Meticulously reads over Cullen’s reports and provides written responses crafted with obvious care. 

“You will turn on me, if I let you.” Trevelyan’s green eyes are clear, bright despite the red ring. Cullen wonders if they have always been that way, as the green matches the Mark on his hand too perfectly.

“I will serve the Inquisition,” Cullen replies.

“Yes, as you served the Templars,” the response is not biting. It is more resigned than anything else. But it is nonetheless a provocation. 

“I am not a Templar any longer.”

“We all say that.”

\--

Haven is burning.

“GO! Cullen, take everyone,” Trevelyan orders. The Mark at his hand pulses. Cullen does not miss how he grabs at it. The Herald grabs at Solas next, pulling the lyrium bottle from his hip and sloshing it down far too quickly. Coughing, Trevelyan pounds at his chest trying to make the cloying fluid go down right. “Solas, Varric, Vivienne, with me.” His hands are shaking. It’s a sign Cullen recognizes, he has shown it himself, overshooting his tolerance in the rush of battle. He made the same mistake at the Gallows. But there is no time to tend to Trevelyan’s rashness, he must lead the others from the wreckage.

The next time he sees Trevelyan he is walking out of the storm. Only the Mark gives away his position against the endless blank void of the mountains. Trevelyan must be Chosen. There is no other possibility. 

\--

The Inquisitor visits Cullen’s office often. Runs his calloused, long fingers over the books on his shelves. Does not say much, only appraises. It does not bother Cullen, he is still able to work. Once in a great while, Trevelyan will select a tome, read it silently for some time, and then depart. Cullen is not sure why today is different. 

“We had a number of mages join today,” Trevelyan begins.

“Oh, yes, Leliana informed me. I have set aside quarters for them. They should prove useful.”

Trevelyan paces the floor of Cullen’s office never looking up. “Where?”

Offhand he cannot remember, so he flips through to living assignments. “The south-east tower, but it will require some renovations yet.”

The Inquisitor nods, resumes pacing. “When you were in the Circle, how many did you have?”

“I’m not sure what you mean?” Cullen puts his pen down. Truthfully, he has some idea. It is not a topic he wishes to broach with Trevelyan. Makes his skin itch to think about. 

“How many mages did you-” They are interrupted. A missive arrives for Trevelyan. He accepts it and leaves in a rush. 

Thank the Maker that did not go any further. 

\--

News of the victory comes before Trevelyan does. They have slain a dragon in the Hinterlands. For the troops, it is a considerable morale boost. Though it may have little to do with Coryphaeus, it has a a great deal to do with feeling capable, as if they are fighting for Thedas, for history, for everything.

Trevelyan arrives days later, still wide-eyed and full of ale, full of lyrium too. The celebrations will continue for some days yet, before tapering off in time to prepare for Celene’s ball. 

The tavern is loud, raucous. He does not like it. But Trevelyan pulls him over, liquor bright in his eyes and smiling. Cullen can’t remember if he has ever seen the Inquisitor smile. It looks a foreign thing. 

Cullen drinks a little, trying to keep the disquiet he feels to himself. Sera grabs him by the wrists and tries to twirl him around, but of course she is too slight and short and Cullen too broad and tall for it to quite work. Instead he smashes against her arm before she flits away, looking for another target.

There is a hand at his shoulder. When Cullen turns, he’s faced with Trevelyan again. “Follow me.”

It doesn’t sound like an order, or really a suggestion really. Just a casual statement between friends. But they’re not friends, so Cullen doesn’t really know what to do with it. Still, he follows.

They wind their way through the crowd, the tavern is packed thick. Once in the open air, they walk side by side through the courtyard, hands clasped behind their backs. Even a casual observer could tell the overlap in their training. 

Trevelyan leads him to Cullen’s office. Locks the door behind them before pushing him against the desk, covering Cullen’s body with his own. He doesn’t know what to do, other than push back until Trevelyan is against the bookcase. It rattles beneath their weight.

“Tell me, Cullen,” his voice is something sour, “how many of your pretty mage charges did you fuck?”

“You’re drunk, Inquisitor.” 

They are gripping tight at each other’s arms, neither of them moving. The impression of Trevelyan’s fingertips will be on his skin tomorrow. Locked into place, mirrors of each other. 

“We spoke about you at Ostwick. So tell me, Knight-Captain Cullen, how many?”

He should simply lie and be done with it. Send the Inquisitor away before he can stir up anything else. 

“What about you, Knight Maxwell?” Cullen bites back.

“Every single one I could get my hands on. So sweet, so precious. They opened themselves to me so easily.”

That fills Cullen with a breed of rage he had thought himself unable to realize. Grabbing Trevelyan by the front of his tunic, he smashes him against the wall. Once, twice. But the Inquisitor continues to smile, starts to laugh. 

“Do me harder, Knight-Captain, I deserve it.” Trevelyan’s hands fist in Cullen’s shirt, tearing at it until it begins ripping apart. “Fuck me, then I can go pick a mage from the tower, get them back for the sins we commit against each other.”

“Maker, what is wrong with you?” Cullen pulls back, letting Trevelyan slide into a heap on the floor. There is a smear of blood against the wall where his head hit. Maker, what has he done?

“Everything.”

\--

When he stands alone at Celene’s ball, he is surrounded by people he does not know, whom he does not wish to know. When Trevelyan stands with him, the pack nearly doubles. The Inquisitor whispers in a low voice he can’t get anything done for the attention, he is trying to transfer their eyes onto Cullen so he can get a moment’s peace. 

Cullen doesn’t know what he’s doing to attract the attention, so he likewise does not know what to do to assist Trevelyan. Leliana saves them both with a few words and a coy gesture. But when she steps away, Cullen is still crowded with nobles and statements he cannot make sense of. Something about tracing his lineage and even if that fails, the ways around it.

When everything is over, blood still running down Trevelyan’s arm, all the way to his wrist, the Inquisitor asks Cullen to dance. He narrows his eyes and says that would not be appropriate. Instead the two of them stare out across the darkened gardens in silence. They watch the stars shift in the sky. 

\--

Trevelyan comes to him again. With two flasks of lyrium in his hands. Cullen says no, but not that he is trying to break his addiction. He does tell Trevelyan to go away. He should not be in Cullen’s quarters at this hour. Trevelyan bites back that he is Inquisitor, he may be wherever he pleases.

Cullen watches as the Inquisitor empties one vial, and then the second. Trevelyan’s head hits the mattress of Cullen’s bed. Now he’s not sure where he’s supposed to sleep. 

Half-lucid words spill from the Inquisitor’s intoxicated lips. “You are very handsome, Knight-Captain.”

“That is not my title,” he reminds Trevelyan. He is not a Templar any longer.

“You know as well as I that we will always be leashed.” 

No, he won’t be. Not if he can help it.

\--

Maxwell has walked in the Fade, a feat not known for the last thousand years. The stench of it clings to his bones, his clothes, his hair. Even though everything has been washed most thoroughly. Most of all, Cullen can see it in his eyes. They are blown wide all the time, as if there is something else behind them. Knows well enough it is not only the lyrium, but something else as well.

“This will kill me,” Trevelyan says.

Cullen’s office is dark if not for the low light of the candles. The sun retreated hours ago. He does not wish to be alone with the Inquisitor, not after everything that has transpired between them. 

“What will?” It is foolish stupid to respond at all. 

Trevelyan raises his Anchored hand, the thing that Coryphaeus wants so desperately. Pulsing and fading, Cullen cannot stand to look at it for very long. Like it touches up inside him, searching for a place that does not exist. 

“This will. When I Purge, it burns. My body is trying to reject it, but it will not go. The lyrium only helps so much.”

Cullen turns away from him, he has nothing to offer. 

“Cassandra says you are stopping your lyrium. Why?”

“I do not wish to be leashed to an Order I no longer serve,” Cullen responds.

“It is not the drug that tangles inside us, holds us, tears us apart.”

With that, Cullen is not sure he can argue.

\--

He dreams of Neria, beckoning him forward into the void, her blonde hair tinged green by the Fade. Her blue eyes rimmed red by the demon she truly is. But he does not push away, because this dream is better than his waking hours. Such a temptation.

He wakes to Maxwell at the foot of his bed, breathing heavily and covering his face. Tears stream out from between his long fingers. There are no words to make this better. 

“I am not a good man,” Maxwell manages to gasp.

“No,” Cullen agrees, “you are not.”

They are the only two people in Thedas who know this. Though Cullen knows he himself is not a good man either. 

\--

This time it is Cullen who goes to Trevelyan’s quarters, his arms laden with reports for the Inquisitor to read before their departure to the Arbor Wilds. Formations, contingencies, maps of the environs. The details that will assist their endeavor committed to parchment. 

He should not have come. The Inquisitor rolls a vial between his hands, already half empty. When he opens his mouth to speak, the inside of his mouth is blue. He does not smile. 

“I barely think I will make it. Even as we plunge forward,” Trevelyan concedes.

Cullen deposits the parchments on the Inquisitor’s desk. “You rely on it too much.”

“There is no such thing as too much.”

There is a sharp, desperate pain in Cullen’s chest. It’s induced by too few words, too many tremors, and not enough sense. All the times Maxwell reached for him, only for Cullen to turn him away. They will always be who they are. Perhaps not in name, but in reputation. 

“There was only one,” Cullen does not wish to specify further.

“Maker,” Trevelyan shudders, “sometimes, even now, I wish I were them, instead of this.”

The Inquisitor is unsteady on his feet. Cullen is not sure why. Only that he topples forward and Cullen manages to catch him before he hits the floor. He holds him up best he can while Maxwell struggles for composure. The way they hold each other seems askew, but Cullen wouldn’t really know one way or another.

\--

Tomorrow they depart. Cullen is unsure what that means. Only, if they do not emerge victorious, the Inquisition has failed. He does not know the consequences of success. 

When Maxwell comes to him, his eyes are clear, alert. Cullen can still see the Fade in them. If he looks closer, perhaps he could see Neria too.

“Do not send me away,” Maxwell’s voice does not waver. “You do not want to.”

“I do,” Cullen is not sure of the truth any longer. 

Maxwell strips away his tunic, letting it fall to the floor. “Do not send me away.”

The word, ‘go’ dies on Cullen’s lips. Instead, Maxwell places his mouth over Cullen’s, kisses him fiercely, his arms around his neck. This, of all things, does not feel foreign. It is something needy, like all the words Maxwell fails to say are pent up behind his tongue. They have nowhere left to go but forward, to inhabit Cullen like a ghost. This will prop them up, at least long enough for their work to be finished.

Maxwell tastes of lyrium. 

Grabbing Maxwell by the hips, Cullen presses him against the wall, sliding their bodies until they find a way to fit, legs slotted between one another. Maxwell’s hands seem everywhere, trying to push off Cullen’s coat, failing that, snaking around his body looking for purchase. 

“Yes,” Maxwell hisses, “finally.”

Cullen knows he is trembling from the adrenaline of it. He does not know what to do but press and press until Maxwell cannot curl against the wall any smaller. Until there is no space left between them. As if they could fuse. 

He nips along Maxwell’s neck, drawing sharp gasps. What he thought was only Maxwell’s desperation becomes his own. How did they even get here in moments of abject terror and loneliness? In the times in between what they should have been doing. Cullen does not know how to care, and neither does Maxwell. Perhaps this is the void behind not-Neria’s eyes.

Perhaps if they had managed to be friends, they would not have ended up lovers.

Maxwell’s hand is at his groin, working the laces of Cullen’s breeches best he can with the limited space. Cullen feels so painfully hard between them that he might just die. The lyrium on Maxwell’s breath haunts senses it should not. 

“Touch me, Cullen,” Maxwell breathes.

“I do not know how.”

“Of course you do.”

Knowing what he does, Cullen trusts the Inquisitor in painfully few matters. The others might, but the others do not know him as this. As a being coming apart as quickly as the sky above them. In these moments of desperation, Maxwell is nothing, less than that. And so is he. 

Maxwell’s hand wraps around Cullen’s cock, then around them both as he manages an awkward maneuver. His wrecked hands are just big enough. 

“Please, please touch me,” Maxwell begs.

“Where?”

“Anywhere.”

Cullen presses his palms against Maxwell’s chest, along his sides, tracing lines of battle scars from years of combat. He can barely make sense of it all. With the way their cocks slick together under Maxwell’s grip, he can barely hold on to anything, much less coherent thought. But he knows that this could have been him. Another set of conditions, a world coming apart. Could he have loved Maxwell? He is not sure, the mess that the Inquisitor is.

But his skin is warm, his breath tastes sweet, and his hand works wonders. Maxwell’s short nails rake against him. Not enough to hurt, or even threaten, but they have to feel something, from somewhere. 

Wordless hisses between them, Cullen feels very strongly that he should push Maxwell away, even now. Instead he curls his arms around his shoulders, holds on, brings their lips together so neither of them must speak.

Maxwell comes first against their stomachs. He keeps stroking Cullen until he comes too in short bursts that feel like dying. It is not until Cullen closes his eyes and lets out a low groan that Maxwell releases them both before sliding to the floor. Maxwell’s hands come to his face, covering it as he sobs. Just once.

This isn’t something Cullen is equipped for. It will never be. 

“We are the same, you and I,” Maxwell begins through shaking breaths. “You think you’ve broken your tether. But it is never the same, once you know what it is like being shackled.”

Cullen wants to tell Maxwell he is wrong, but he is not so certain.


End file.
